The Democratic Republic of Portobello Mushroom is a huge, genial nation, remarkable for its daily referendums, punitive income tax rates, and stringent health and safety legislation. The compassionate population of 411 million Portobello Mushroomians are fiercely patriotic and enjoy great social equality; they tend to view other, more capitalist countries as somewhat immoral and corrupt.

The large, socially-minded government juggles the competing demands of Education, Healthcare, and Welfare. The average income tax rate is 61.6%, and even higher for the wealthy.

The sizeable but underdeveloped Portobello Mushroomian economy, worth 12.7 trillion Mush Dollars a year, is quite specialized and mostly made up of the Trout Farming industry, with significant contributions from Tourism, Furniture Restoration, and Automobile Manufacturing. State-owned companies are common. Average income is 30,981 Mush Dollars, and distributed extremely evenly, with practically no difference between the richest and poorest citizens.

Same-sex marriages are increasingly common, grade school teachers mark homework with red "CITATION NEEDED" stamps, 100-year-old politicians are now a thing of the past, and the acceptance of acupuncture and other alternative therapies has needled the scientific community. Crime, especially youth-related, is totally unknown, thanks to a well-funded police force and progressive social policies in education and welfare. Portobello Mushroom's national animal is the Echidna, which frolics freely in the nation's many lush forests.

Portobello Mushroom is ranked 40,133^rd in the world and 106^th in Democratic Socialist Assembly for Highest Food Quality, scoring 40.97 on the Meeshlin-Starr Index.